The Road Back (32 page)

"Yes, but the coach that was to take us never came! And we hadn't money for the train!"

Ludwig's face brightens, ever clearer and clearer, it looks
almost unearthly, so serene is it. "And then we started to
read
Werther——
" he says.

"And to drink wine," I prompt him.

He smiles: "And
Green Heinrich!
Remember how we used to whisper together about Judith?"

I nod. "But afterwards you preferred Hölderlin to all the others."

A strange peace seems to have come over Ludwig. He is
talking easily and quietly. "What schemes we had! and 
how noble and good we were to be! A nice mess we have 
made of it, Ernst—poor ninnies——"

"Yes," I say meditatively. "What has come of it all "

Side by side we lean out over the window-sill. The wind is asleep in the cherry trees. They whisper softly. A shooting star falls. The clock strikes twelve.

"We must be going to sleep." Ludwig gives me his hand.

"Good night, Ernst."

"Sleep well, Ludwig."

Late in the night someone thunders on my door. With a sudden start I sit upright. "Who's there?"

"It's me! Karl! Open the door!"

I spring out of bed.

He bursts in. "Ludwig——"

I grab hold of him. "What's wrong with Ludwig?"

"Dead——"

The room spins round. I fall back on the bed. "Get a doctor!"

Karl smashes a chair on to the floor so that it
splinters. "Dead, Ernst—artery cut "

I do not know how I put on my clothes. I do no t
know how I came here. But suddenly a room is there, 
piercing light, blood, and intolerable glitter and sparkle of 
quartzes and stones, and in a settle before it, an unutter
ably weary, thin, collapsed figure, a shockingly pale, sharp
face with half-shut, extinguished eyes 
I do not know what is happening. The landlady is there,
Karl is there, noise is there—one of them is speaking to
me: to stay here—I understand: they want to fetch some
one—I nod; I crouch into the sofa, doors rattle, I cannot 
move, cannot speak. Suddenly I am alone with Ludwig and 
look at him——

Karl was the last to be with him. He found him calm and almost gay. After he had gone, Ludwig put his few things in order and wrote for some time. Then he drew a chair to the window and set a basin with warm water on the table beside him. He locked the door, sat himself in the settle, and with his arm in the water he cut the artery. The pain was slight. He saw the blood flowing, a scene he had often thought on—to let this hateful, poisoned blood pour out of his body.

His room became very clear. He saw every book, every nail, every glint of the quartzes, the iridescence, the colours; he absorbed it: his room. It gathered about him, it passed in with his breath and was one with his life. Then it receded. Uncertain. His youth began, in pictures. Eichendorff, the woods, homesickness. Reconciled, without pain. Beyond the woods rose up barbed-wire entanglements, little white shrapnel clouds, the burst of heavier shells. But they alarmed him no longer. They were muffled, almost like bells. The bells became louder, but the woods were still there. The bells pealed in his head so loudly that he felt it must burst. Then it grew darker. The pealing sounded fainter, and the evening came in at the window, clouds floated up under his feet. He had wished once in his life to see flamingoes; now he knew—these were flamingoes, with "broad, pinkish-grey wings, lots of them, a phalanx—did wild ducks not once fly so toward the very red moon, red as poppies in Flanders?—The landscape receded farther and farther, the woods sank deeper, rivers rose up, gleaming, silver, and islands; the pinkish-grey wings flew ever higher and higher, and the horizon became ever brighter—the sea—— Now, suddenly, a dark cry swelled in his throat, hot, insistent, a last thought spilled over out of the brain into the failing consciousness: Fear, rescue, bind it up!—he tried to rise, staggering, to lift his hand—the body jerked, but already it was too weak. All spun round and spun round, then it vanished; and the giant bird with dark pinions came very gently with slow sweeps and the wings closed noiselessly over him.

A hand pushes me away. People are there again, they are taking up Ludwig, I pull the first one away, no one shall touch him! But then all at once his face is before me, bright and cold, changed, harsh, strange——I know him no more and stagger back, out.

I do not know how I come to be in my room. My mind is vacant, my arms lie limp along the rests of the chair.

I have done, Ludwig. I, too, have done. Why should I
stay? We none of us belong here. Uprooted, burned, ashes
.
Why did you go alone?

I stand up. My hands are hot, my eyes burning. I feel feverish. My thoughts are confused. I do not know what I am doing. "Take me," I whisper, "take me too!"

My teeth chatter with cold. My hands are wet. I stumble forward. Big black circles vibrate before my eyes.

I stiffen suddenly—Was that a door? a window rattling? A shudder runs through me. I stagger up. In the moonlight through the open door of my room I see my old tunic hanging on the wall beside the violin. I move toward it stealthily, on tip-toe, so that it shall not observe me; I sneak on this grey tunic that has destroyed so much of us, our youth and our life—I pull it down and think to fling it away, but then I smooth it lightly with my hand, I put it on, I feel it taking possession of me through the skin, I shiver, my heart thuds heavily in my throat. A note 
twangs out in the silence! I start and turn round, I take
fright, press back against the wall.

In the pale light of the open door stands a shadow. It sways and hovers, it comes nearer and beckons, a figure, a face with dark eye-sockets, between them a great cleft gaping, a mouth speaking without sound. Is that——? "Walter——" I whisper. Walter Willenbrock, killed in August '17, at Passchendaele. Am I mad then? am I dreaming? am I ill?—But behind him another is already pushing his way in, pale, crippled, bowed down—Friedrich Tom-berge, whose back was broken by a shell-splinter at Soissons, while he was sitting on the stairs of a dugout. And now they press in, with dead eyes, grey and ghastly, a swarm of shadows, they have come back again and are filling the room—Franz Kemmerich, with his eighteen summers, who had his leg amputated and died three days after—Stanislaus Katczinsky, with dragging feet and drooping head, whence trickles a thin, dark, stream—Gerhard Feldkamp, blown to pieces by a trench mortar bomb at Ypres. Paul Baumer, killed in October '18, Heinrich Wessling, Anton Heinzmann, Haie Westhus, Otto Matthes, Franz Wagner, shadows, shadows. A long procession, an unending line, they press in, they perch on the books, they clamber up to the window, they fill the room.

But suddenly the horror, the astonishment breaks in
me—for slowly a stronger, a darker shadow has arisen.
Propped on its arms it creeps in through the door, it takes
on life, bones grow within it, a body drags itself in, teeth
gleam chalky-white out of the black face, eyes too now
flash in the deep sockets Rearing like a seal he crawls in, toward me—the English captain I and trailing behind him, rustling, the puttees. With a slight lurch he flings himself upwards, reaches toward me with clutching hands— "Ludwig! Ludwig!" I cry, "Ludwig, help me!"

I catch up piles of books and fling them at the hands.
—"Bombs, Ludwig!" I groan; I wrench the aquarium from
its stand and heave it toward the door, it crashes and
shatters in pieces; I hurl the butterfly-case after it, the
violin; I seize a chair and strike at that grin: "Ludwig!"
I shout, "Ludwig!" I rush at him, I burst through the door, 
the chair crashes. I rush out—cries behind me, frightened
cries—but louder, nearer the gasping, panting—he is chas
ing me I I fly down the stairs, he stumps after me, I gain
the street, he is there, I run, the houses rock.—"Help!
Help!" Squares, trees, a clutch at my shoulder, he has 
caught me! I roar, howl, stumble; uniforms, fists, raging, 
flashes and the full thunder of the gleaming axe that strikes 
me to the ground——

H
as it been years? Or was it only weeks? Like a mist, like a distant thunderstorm the past hangs on the horizon. I have been ill a long time, and whenever the fever lessened the troubled face of my mother was always there. But then came an immense weariness that took away all obdurate-ness, a waking sleep in which all thoughts were resolved, a feeble surrender to the gentle singing of the blood and the warmth of the sun.

The meadows are glowing with the splendour of late summer. Just to lie in the grasses!—the spears are higher than one's face. They bend over, they are the world, nothing is here but gentle swaying to the rhythm of the wind. In places where grass alone grows the wind has a soft humming note like the sound of a distant scythe—there where sorrel is, its note is deeper, more sombre. One must be still a long time and listen intently to hear it.

Then the stillness comes to life. Tiny flies with black, red-spotted wings sit close side by side on the spike of sorrel and rock to and fro with the swaying of the stem. Bumble bees hum like little aeroplanes above the clover, and a lady-bird, solitary and persistent, climbs to the topmost limit of a spray of shepherd's purse.

An ant reaches my wrist and disappears into the tunnel of my coat sleeve. He is dragging after him a piece of dry grass, much longer than himself. I feel the light scratching on my skin and am unable to decide whether it is the ant or the little piece of grass that traces this exquisitely delicate wake of life down my arm, dissolving every moment in little shudders. But now the wind blows into my sleeve, and I think that the lightest caress of love must be uncouth beside this breath on the skin.

Butterflies come eddying along, given up utterly to the wind, as though they swam upon it, the white and golden skiffs of the air. They alight upon flowers, and suddenly, when next I left my eyes, I see two sitting still on my chest, one like a yellow leaf with red spots, the other outspread with violet peacock's eyes on deep velvet brown. Ribbons, decorations of summer. I breathe very lightly and slowly, even so my breath moves their wings—but they stay with me. The bright sky hangs above the grasses and a dragonfly with whirring wings is poised over my shoe.

White Mary's threads, cobwebs, shimmering gossamers float in the air. They hang from the stalks and the leaves, the wind bears them along, they catch on my hands, on my clothes, they spread themselves over my face, my eyes, they cover me up. My body, now even my body is passing into the meadow. Its boundaries are becoming uncertain, it is no longer apart, the light breaks down its contours and at the edges it is beginning to be unsure.

Above the leather of my shoes rises the breath of the grasses, into the woollen pores of my clothing presses the odour of the earth, through my hair blows the moving sky, which is wind—and the blood knocks against the skin, it rises to meet the incoming thing, the nerve-ends are erect and quivering, already I feel the butterfly's feet on my breast, and the tread of the ant echoes in the concave chambers of my veins—then the wave gathers strength, stronger, the last resistance has carried away and now I am a hill without a name, grass and earth.

The noiseless streams of the earth ebb and flow, and my blood flows with them; it is borne along with them and has part in them all. Through the warm dark of the earth it is flowing with the meaning of crystals and quartzes, it is in the secret sound of the weight with which drops sink down among the roots and assemble to thin runnels in search of the springs. With them it breaks out again from under the ground, it is in brooks and in rivers, in the glistening banks, in the breadth of the sea and in the. moist silver vapour the sun draws up again to the clouds—it circles and circles, it takes ever more and more of me with it and empties it into the earth and underground streams; the chest sinks and collapses, the arms fall away, slowly and without pain the body disappears; it is gone; now only the fabric, only the husks remain. The body has become the trickling of subterranean springs, the talk of the grasses, moving wind, rustling leaf, and silent, resounding sky. The meadow comes nearer, flowers grow through it, blossoms sway over it; I have sunk down, forgotten, poured away under poppies and yellow marsh marigolds, over which butterflies and dragon-flies hover.

Lightest of movements—gentlest of tremors—Is this the last vibration before the end? Is it only the rocking of the poppy flowers, and the grasses? Is it only the trickling among the roots of the trees?

But the movement increases. It becomes regular, passes
over into breathing, pulsating; wave returns upon wave and
pours back—back from rivers, trees, leaf and earth. The
cycle begins anew, but now it does not impoverish, it brings
ever more in, and it stays; it becomes vision, perception, 
feeling, hands, body—the husks are no longer empty—the 
earth again laps about my body, released, light and winged
—I open my eyes——